Alternative Grading: Practices to Support Both Equity and Learning
This praxis-oriented blog post provides a rationale for considering alternative grading schemes, details the pros and cons of adopting specification grading, and includes a brief overview for designing one. It also offers further resources and a brief bibliography.
Traditional grades bear little relationship to learning. Receiving and integrating feedback is an essential part of the learning process, but because grades are retrospective, they serve as a poor feedback mechanism. The meaning of grades may also not be obvious to students; they do not understand what is expected of them in order to earn a particular grade, nor do they know what criteria to use to self-assess their progress. The relative opacity or transparency of grades is highly dependent upon instructors’ assessment practices, and alternative grading systems encourage greater transparency and better communication between students and instructors (Winkelmes, 2016).